On the domestic front, things could not be going better.

We are top of the table and not just winning, but winning in style and by a good margin of goals too. Rooney looks better than ever, our injury problems have barely been noticed, and the players coming in as replacements making more than a strong case to remain there. Even De Gea is repaying the faith Fergie has shown in him and looks better and more confident with every passing game.

Our attention now turns to the UEFA Champions League, the competition that after last seasons’ crushing defeat by the reigning champions of Europe and Spain, Barcelona, prompted the restructuring of the squad and a great deal of transfer activity this past summer.

The board and fans both realised that steps had to be made in order to compete with what looked like the greatest club side the world had ever seen, with masses of individual talents in players like Leo Messi, Xavi and Iniesta, and also a team ethos and a will to win. This, accompanied by the fact our squad was facing a number of retirements that summer, with key players in the twilights of their careers, led to us delving into the market.

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Fergie knew action needed to be taken if history was not to repeat itself and a young crop of players were purchased – and have done much better than expected, lighting up the domestic league and adding to what was already a great squad. When you also factor in a certain striker that goes by the name of Wayne Rooney and the breath taking form he is in, United look a formidable force.

It is true that Barca also bought in the summer; Cesc Fabregas and the Chilean Alexis Sanchez were the marquee signings of choice, yet they are both attacking players. No defensive reinforcements were bought in, with Guardiola choosing to hope the forwards would always score one more than the opposition. The option of playing with three ‘centre backs’ has been employed thus far, yet it seems strange to consider Sergio Busquets a centre back, and Barcelona do look prone to conceding the odd goal. Defensively there remain question marks, and whilst as an attacking force they look as good as ever, elsewhere on the park they may suffer when injuries and suspensions strike.

United will certainly fancy their chances of avenging the events of last May, but it would be foolish to look solely at Barcelona as our only threat on the European stage.

Real Madrid look just as good as Barcelona, if not better at times. Much is expected of Madrid in the second season of Jose Mourinho’s tenure, and they will be going all out to win the Champions league this term. Likewise the Italian sides. There is always tough competition from Italy, and places like the San Siro are tough grounds to visit for the away leg of a tie. As with last season, the possibility of drawing an English side is never out of the question, and although City are new to the competition, they look stronger than ever this season. It is always difficult when playing a side you know so well domestically in the UCL, as we found during our ties with Chelsea, and there are always surprises that get thrown up.

It is vital to win the group in order to gain a more favourable draw in the first knockout round, and this is our first target. Fergie will not allow the players to get ahead of themselves and become consumed by winning the competition so early on, yet we are certainly one of the favourites, and as fans it doesn’t hurt to dream!

Article courtesy of Rebecca Knight from The Busby Way

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A revitalised Blackburn side head to St James’ Park on Saturday hoping to make it six wins in a row against Newcastle who have started the season magnificently.

The Magpies come up against their bogey team this weekend with Alan Pardew’s men yet to taste defeat in league and cup. The harmonious feeling that is now flowing through the club is a refreshing change from the drama and turmoil that usually makes the headlines. Credit should go to Pardew and chief scout Graham Carr for their recruitment drive this summer with Yohan Cabaye, signed for £4 million from French champions Lille, looking like an absolute steal. His performance in last week’s draw at Aston Villa was a joy to behold with the midfielder unlucky not to open his account for the club with former Magpies keeper pulling off three world class saves to deny him. Newcastle showed a growing resoluteness that is becoming a hallmark of Pardews reign and the manager seems to be able to squeeze every ounce of determination from his players. Tuesday’s 4-3 Carling Cup thriller at Nottingham Forest proved that with his troops refusing to give up eventually wining the tie in the dying embers of extra time through a Fabricio Coloccini goal. Another positive from that game was the return of Hatem Ben Arfa who appeared in black and white for the first time in nearly a year whilst fellow Frenchman Sylvain Marveaux also impressed giving Pardew a welcome selection headache.

What a difference a week makes with Blackburn now a high after two wins in the space a few days shifting some of the pressure from boss Steve Kean’s shoulders. The Scotsman pulled off an unlikely comeback to take all three points at home to Arsenal last week before seeing his side beat Leyton Orient 3-2 in the Carling Cup. It is certainly a massive turnaround for Kean who was the subject of protests before the game at Ewood Park last week. He definitely silenced his critics with Blackburn running out 4-3 winners gaining their first Premier League win of the campaign. It’s been a rough ride for Kean since he took over from Sam Allardyce but the signing of goal poaching Yakubu from Everton looks like a shrewd bit of business after he notched two on his debut. With confidence now beginning to rise a trip to Newcastle will provide a much sterner test although Kean should be positive of coming away with all three points with St James’ Park a welcome source of wins over the last few years. They recorded a 2-1 victory in this fixture last season and would certainly go for a repeat of that on Saturday.

Davide Santon, Alan Smith, Haris Vuckic and Mike Williamson are the only injury concerns for Newcastle.

Blackburn on the other hand welcome back David Goodwillie, Morten Gamst Pedersen and Michel Salgado. David Dunn and Ryan Nelson miss out on the trip to Tyneside.

Key Players

Yohan Cabaye – The French midfield playmaker has made Kevin Nolan a distant memory at St James’ Park with his box-to-box style of play. Will be intent on breaking is Newcastle duck this weekend after last week’s duel with Given saw the keeper come out on top.

Junior Hoilett – With pace and skill in abundance the young winger could be deployed on the right to have a go at makeshift left back Ryan Taylor. Will be expected to get the ball down and run at the defender at every opportunity.

Verdict: 2-1

Fancy winning a million pounds??

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Despite a negative vibe from the press Arsenal have only lost one game in the last six and have laid down a good foundation to work from. Wenger will be hoping that Ramsey’s last gasp winner in Marseille will breed further confidence in their pursuit to climb the Premier League.

At FFC this week we have seen a mixed bag of Gunners blogs that include in defence of Theo Walcott; double deal suggests Arsenal have woken up, while time for a re-distribution of income and wealth at the Emirates.

We also look at the best Arsenal articles around the web this week

Double deals suggest Arsenal have finally woken up and smelt the Coffee?

In defence of Theo Walcott

Transfer will leave Arsenal with only themselves to blame

Time at Arsenal for a re-distribution of income, wealth and talent

Arsenal simply in a referee induced crisis

Are fans starting to vote with their feet?

Wenger set to pip Dalglish and Pardew to £8m deal

Worth a £2.5m gamble from Arsene Wenger?

Best of WEB

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What next for Thomas Vermaelen? Striker to stay and Wenger is ‘parfaite’…. – Highbury House

Arsenal’s main hope of success is returning to the George Graham days –Le Grove

Crowd chants – Online Gooner

Arsène And The Wages Of Sin – A Cultured Left Foot

Which will come first for AOC – An Arsenal or England first-team call up? – Gunnersphere

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Click on Roger Johnson’s misses below to unveil our current Premier League Wag XI

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Every manager brings something different out of every player. Some managers like Wenger and Ferguson pride themselves on getting the best out of their players whilst others such as Redknapp expect their squad to prove themselves or face being dropped. Players are signed for their clubs in a frenzy of praise from manager and fans with press releases, blog posts and YouTube compilations spreading at an exponential rate the moment a player signing is announced, but it doesn’t always work out. Look at Diego Forlan. A laughing stock in the Premier League but then he gets shipped of to Villarreal and starts banging in the goals like nobody’s business. I remember one year he scored a hat trick on the last day of the season to win the golden boot for Europe joint with Thierry Henry. Not bad for a striker who supposedly didn’t know where the goal was. And he’s not the only one. Every season there is wasted talent in the league, players not being played or not benefiting from their manager’s tactics. So who are the top ten wasted talents in the premier league this season?

Click on Stephen Ireland to unveil the top 10

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Chelsea’s under-fire manager, Andre Villas-Boas, has informed the media this week that the festive month of December will be a crucial one for both him and the team. Six Premier League games and one in the Champions League is on the menu in December for Chelsea and the young Portuguese manager will no doubt by writing his wish list to Santa asking for maximum points in the hope that he’ll still be in a job come January.

Villas-Boas has seen his side win just twice in their last nine matches including twice to Kenny Dalglish’s Liverpool at Stamford Bridge in the space of 10 days. The second of those defeats came this week and ended their Carling Cup chances whilst the league meeting knocked Chelsea out of the top four in to fifth. They have the chance to move back in to the top four on Saturday when they face the team immediately above them, Newcastle United at St James’s Park.

However, Newcastle will ensure that the crucial month of fixtures gets off to a tough start since the Magpies unbeaten at home and have lost just once in the league this season, away to Manchester City and who boast the joint best defences in the league along with Man City. They proved more than a match for Man Utd when they travelled to Old Trafford and held Man Utd to a 1-1 draw, so back on home soil, they will be no pushover for Chelsea in what has become a must win game.

Despite the outcome at Newcastle, it is the following game against Valencia in the Champions League that is even more crucial for Chelsea. To qualify for the knock out stages of that tournament, they must win or earn a goalless draw, a very tall order when low on confidence and against the Spaniards who know that a win or score draw would see them finish above Chelsea in Group E.

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Should the unthinkable happen for Villas-Boas and they lose or even draw against Newcastle this weekend and go out of the Champions League next week, then it could be that the 34 year will not be at the helm when they welcome Manchester City to Stamford Bridge. Even qualification in the Champions League may not be enough depending on the outcome of this game, such is the proximity exit door for Villas-Boas, if you are to believe the media and if City hit the form they have shown they’re capable of, then a heavy defeat for the Blues will no doubt be hard to swallow for Abramovich in the “battle of the billionaires”.

If Villas-Boas is still standing by then, they then hit the road to face Wigan and then Spurs away before Christmas before finishing off the year with home games against Fulham and Aston Villa over the Festive period.

It is hard to envisage a scenario whereby Chelsea win all seven games in December given the run of form they have been in and it is equally difficult to envisage Villas-Boas being in a job come the new year and being trusted to add to the £70 million he spent on two players in the Summer with more signings in January if they don’t at least go throughout December without losing. Any defeat over the coming month will result in close scrutiny of the former Porto manager’s tenure and after Steve Bruce became the first managerial casualty of the Premier League season this week, the bookmakers make Villas-Boas the second favoruite at 3/1 to be the next top flight boss to face the chop behind 10/11 market leader, Steve Kean, at Blackburn. As it stands, it is a question of when more than if for both Kean and Villas-Boas, the question is, will the search for the next Chelsea manager begin before the year is out?

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Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney has admitted that his side would prefer to be playing in the Champions League rather than the Europa League, but stated that the Premier League champions now want to win the tournament.

The Old Trafford outfit find themselves in Europe’s second-tier tournament after finishing third in Group C of the Champions League and being eliminated at the hands of Benfica and Basel.

Although playing in the Europa League will be a new experience for most of the players and manager, Rooney is eager to lift the trophy.

“It’s a shame we’re out of the Champions League. That’s what we all want to play in,” he told the club’s official website.

“Unfortunately we went out and now we turn our attention to the Premier League and Europa League.

“I don’t think the manager’s won the Europa League, so I’m sure he’ll want to win it. Every competition we enter we want to win.

“There are some good teams but we have to believe, keep working and hopefully we can go on and win it,” he stated.

United continue their attempt to overthrow cross-town rivals Manchester City from the top of the Premier League, and take on QPR at Loftus Road on Sunday.

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By Gareth McKnight

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There is certainly no love lost between Liverpool and Newcastle United and there has been plenty of activity between the two Premier League clubs both on and off the field.

The Reds have already bought Andy Carroll, a deal that the Magpies have actually done pretty well out of, and Jose Enrique from Newcastle within the last year, and have even been linked with Cheik Tiote in this window.

Liverpool and Newcastle met last week at Anfield where two goals from another former Magpie, Craig Bellamy, helped the Reds to a 3-1 win and gave Liverpool some breathing space in 6th position in the Premier League table.

Here are managers Kenny Dalglish and Alan Pardew on the touchline during that game, with the Liverpool boss having a chuckle, but bearing in mind the £35 million that Newcastle bagged for Carroll, is it Pardew who’s having the last laugh?

Leave your suggestions below…

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If, on October 23rd 2011, you had a heavy blow to the head and all knowledge of Premier League campaigns were simultaneously erased from your memory, you may have stood aloof at your television/betting slip/friend in the pub and sanctimoniously proclaimed that this year the Barclays Premier League was a one-horse race. However, a one-horse race, by definition, is one in which only one of the competitors has a real chance of winning and, of course, “you can’t write off Manchester United ,” says Newcastle defender Danny Simpson .

Yet, Danny Simpson’s comments came the morning after his side had torn apart a lacklustre Manchester United side at St. James’ Park, meaning that, having failed to pick up any points in their past two Premier League games, Tottenham are only three points behind them with a game in hand. Maybe it isn’t a one-horse race, not even one of those two-horse races you often see in La Liga nowadays, but maybe, this year, the Premier League is a three-horse race. Imagine that: three beautiful stallions, magnificently crowned with the majestic Fergie, devilishly good-looking Mancini and rather plump Harry, galloping powerfully towards their destiny, pulling away from the string of inferior horses playing host to their jockeys in the form of Arsene Wenger, Kenny Dalglish and Andre Villas-Boas.

It might just be though, that the most experienced jockey of them all, Sir Alex Ferguson , is riding a dead horse: last week, Alan Pardew threatened to go gung-ho from the first whistle, “Looking at Manchester United’s recent games, teams that have sat back have got thumped,” said the Toon boss, “They’ve got such talent in their ranks, they’re going to cause you problems but we have a striker in form and a central midfield pairing that I think is as good as theirs,” he added, in the faintest of praise for a midfield partnership that is far outshining one that has been bolstered with the return of a 37-year old that retired over 6 months ago. It worked too; Newcastle United went out, flooded the wings with overlapping run after overlapping run and forced three goals out of a dismal Man. United side that couldn’t reply.

Having lost their first away game in 11, Sir Alex’s Manchester United had to travel to The Etihad to face Premier League leaders, and perfect home form holders, Manchester City . Instead of stoking a fire, much like pundits across the ITV suggested he was probably doing on a personal level with his players in the dressing room and Mancini eluded to by describing them as “angry,” he said absolutely nothing and thus gave out the most vocal of mind game messages according to professional psychologist Nicky Butt: “[bringing back Scholes ] took all the attention off their home record and the bookmakers’ odds and switched all the attention to Paul Scholes and Manchester United.

It was a great little bit of psychology.” For all the brilliance of Ferguson’s psychological mind games, it wasn’t quite as anatomically bright: a massive 4 minutes and 12 seconds after coming on for Nani, Paul Scholes set up Manchester City’s 2nd goal by providing James Milner with the ball on a plate to cross for Sergio Aguero . Nicky Butt obviously avoided mentioning this to try and leapfrog his former Manchester United team mate in a bid to become his new favourite ginger.

However, winner of the best mind game of them all regarding the race at the top of the Premier League goes to Roberto Mancini for his comments before that fateful F.A Cup tie that made that second-half restoration and assault on Manchester United’s pride all the more prevalent. He did something Harry Redknapp hasn’t done directly all season: “I think in this moment, City, United and Tottenham can win this title.”

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Now, despite winning, Manchester United will be licking their wounds after a “careless” second-half display, which saw the chance to really hurt Manchester City and meanwhile galvanise their own season, disappear into the heavy Mancunian mist – and with it came a Kolarov and Aguero goal. Tottenham have a January ahead of them that they will feel is favourable to their title hopes and like I said, this month will be the most vital stage of Spurs’ season.

The Premier League has shown time and time again that the team who run away with it the quickest isn’t always the team that wins the race and no more valid an example can be found than Kevin Keegan and Newcastle United in the 1995/96 campaign, which saw them 12 points clear at the top in February, but eventually fall behind eventual winners Manchester United. However, the “we’ll score more than you,” philosophy that was on display at St. James’ Park under Keegan, isn’t quite the same mentality instilled at The Etihad under Mancini. Much more relevant to City’s current campaign is Chelsea’s title winning season of 2005/06.

The first half of their season saw them pick up 45 points from 48 in a team based on strong foundations in defence, but their steady ship rocked and an eventual 18-point lead in March was cut to just seven late on in the season. Manchester City have gone in to 2012 as consistent as they have been all season, but with a lead of just 3 points rather than the lofty ones of the two above examples, a bit of looking of the shoulder behaviour wouldn’t be unwise.

Roberto Mancini is aware that Harry Redknapp ’s Tottenham are not to be underestimated and his focus on them, equally as strong as his focus on a “dangerous” United, is prudent. Sir Alex Ferguson ’s Manchester United does have the durability factor, but as they are showing this season, they are vulnerable and potentially the weakest Manchester United side the Scotsman has had to manage in the past decade.

As much as they could stick it out and push City until the final day, they could drift away in a fashion never expected of a United side. If they do this, premature celebrations would be foolish: calmly and unassumingly waiting is Tottenham Hotspur, technically creative and quietly threatening.

Article courtesy of Jordan Florit from This is Futbol

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Manchester City boss Roberto Mancini has confirmed that he has accepted Carlos Tevez’s apology, will meet with the striker in the near future and may well select him once he is fit and ready to play.

The Argentina international has had a scandalous last year at the Etihad Stadium, between asking to leave the club, refusing to enter the field of play from the bench against Bayern Munich and going AWOL for three months.

After failing to land a transfer to a different club in the January transfer window, the South American has returned to England and apologised for his actions.

Despite being livid with Tevez earlier in the saga, Mancini has confirmed that things are close to being reconciled.

“Yeah, yeah,” the Italian coach confirmed when asked by ESPN if he had forgiven the temperamental forward.

“I checked what Carlos said in his statement and tomorrow I will talk with him.

“One week after Munich I called him and I said ‘Carlos apologise to everyone and it is finished’, I don’t have a problem.

“I think he needs two or three weeks to train, and then he will look at it – that is normal,” the manager concluded.

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By Gareth McKnight

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Fernando Torres will weigh up his future at Chelsea in the summer according to his agent.

The Spanish international striker has struggled since moving to Stamford Bridge from Liverpool in January 2011, and has recently gone through a long-term goal drought.

Despite El Nino’s performances improving of late, Antonio Sanz has stated that his client will consider his options at the end of this season.

“We’ll evaluate his future in the coming months. Fernando has another four years on his contract at Chelsea and the situation there has changed for him,” the representative told The Telegraph.

“With Villas-Boas, he was not considered, but the arrival of Roberto Di Matteo on the bench has seen him return to have the trust that he deserves.

“He played a great match in the Champions League in Lisbon, assisting the winning goal for Kalou.”

Roma and Juventus have been linked with moves for the misfiring frontman, but as yet there have been no concrete offers.

“We know the new American project at Roma and the philosophy of manager Luis Enrique, but if Roma want Fernando, they will have to talk with Chelsea.

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“The Italian championship is of a good standard, but there are currently no discussions with Roma or Juventus.”

By Gareth McKnight

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